The World's Best Spice Shops

Whether their goods are packaged in tidily stacked glass jars or heaped to overflowing in burlap sacks, these shops and markets feature some of the best and rarest of the spice world.Check out the techniques that put these flavors to use in global grilling or sharpen your seasoning skills by learning how to use spices in cooking.

Spice Station; Los Angeles and Montreal

Spice Station; Los Angeles and Montreal

Before opening their spice emporium in 2009, Bronwen Tawse and Peter Bahlawanian traveled the world on a quest to understand the methods of harvesting and drying spices. Their colorful Silver Lake shop — with a clientele that includes L.A. food writer Jonathan Gold — sells more than 400 spices, herbs, blends, salts, and sugars, including hard-to-find items like piment d’Espelette, wattleseed, and ghost chiles. The spices are ground in-house for free, but whole pods, berries, and seeds are also sold to go. spicestationsilverlake.com

La Boîte à Epice; New York City

La Boîte à Epice; New York City

At his store in Hell’s Kitchen, chef-turned-spice-specialist Lior Lev Sercarz creates blends with lyrical names like Cancale, Isphahan, and Apollonia, which he sells to the country’s best chefs. Sercarz’s clients include Eric Ripert, Daniel Boulud, and fellow spice expert Ana Sortun. For Ripert, Sercarz made a new take on quatre épices, with less sweetness and a hint of anise; for Sortun, a blend of sumac, rose blossom, and sesame. He also creates unusual cookies, such as the smoked cinnamon, brown sugar, and white chocolate flavored Canella. laboiteny.com